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I'm very new with Ubuntu and generally with linux. I saw ubuntu and it seems like this OS is really good and stable, and so I decided to install it alongside my windows 7 OS.

I have a few problems with the installation. Here is what I did:

  1. I downloaded the 64bit version from Ubuntu official website, and burned it on a dvd.
  2. I set the boot sequence to first load from my CD-Rom.
  3. Ubuntu installation started, and I chose "Install Ubuntu" in the menu. (where there is also a "Try Ubuntu" option)
  4. I clicked forward until I got into the installation type screen enter image description here

As you can see, the installation wont show my actual details about my hard drive! I have 1 hard drive with 750 GB - 80 GB - My main drive with windows 7 OS 600GB - All of my stuff 20GB Free space that I saved for Ubuntu But the installation wont show that!

Sergey
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user92322
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  • Reboot and use the "TRY UBUNTU" option. You can install from there. – Ringtail Sep 23 '12 at 21:03
  • Try booting into TRY UBUNTU, and then before opening the installer, opening Terminal and running sudo apt-get remove dmraid. Let it finish, and then try to start the installer. – nanofarad Sep 23 '12 at 21:55

2 Answers2

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I've seen people with this problem before here on askubuntu (Ubuntu inslaller seeing the disk as one large unpartitioned space, not seeing any Windows partitions) and it usually was caused by Windows using Dynamic Disks, which is a proprietary MS extension to the standard MBR partitioning scheme.

Be careful, making any modifications to the partitions from Ubuntu installer when it can't see the existing partitions will result in data loss. You need to convert the disk to a "Basic disk" in MS terminology before proceeding.

Update: after some googling I see that Ubuntu installer should be aware of Dynamic disks and at least warn the user that it can't make modifications to the partition table. So the issue may be caused by something else. At any rate, you should not proceed until the installer sees all the partitions on the disk, forcing it to create new partitions on top will result in data loss.

Sergey
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  • One requires third-party tools, none of which are free AFAIK, to convert to a basic disk. – nanofarad Sep 23 '12 at 21:53
  • ObsessiveFOSS - Thanks for your suggestion. I tried it, but still I don't get the full information about my hard drive. – user92322 Sep 24 '12 at 03:19
  • Sergey, Thanks for your comment. Do I have to erase everything on my hard drive in order to convert it to a "Basic disk"? – user92322 Sep 24 '12 at 03:21
  • @user92322: have you confirmed that Windows shows the disk as Dynamic? In this case my guess would be yes, the easiest (?) would be to back up all the data, re-partition the drive and re-install Windows. Or to use a separate hard drive for Ubuntu. I'm a bit confused by the fact that Ubuntu is seemingly supposed to at least warn you about dynamic discs, so the problem may be in something else. I don't use Windows so I never had this problem personally. – Sergey Sep 24 '12 at 03:27
  • Hey! thanks for your very quick reply. I did not confirmed it. But I also don't find any related suggestions that might solve my problem, apart to convert my disk. My purpose is to install ubuntu alongside windows 7. Will I be able to install win7 on a "basic disk"? I really wondering why my disk is even "Dynamic" at all. – user92322 Sep 24 '12 at 03:36
  • @user92322: Windows is totally able to be installed on a Basic disk, but it really likes to convert partitions to Dynamic ones when you do something like resizing partitions using Windows disk management utility. It asks before doing do, but the default is "yes" (as I remember). – Sergey Sep 24 '12 at 03:59
  • Oh. Well, that's a funny fact, because I shrank 20GB from my C drive to save some GB's for Ubuntu. So it's possible to convert disk to "dynamic", but once you do you can't turn it back? only by a format? thanks for that weirdos 7 – user92322 Sep 24 '12 at 04:23
  • Hey I just discovered that my disk is not "Dynamic" at all. It is "Basic Disk", and that's for sure. will you help me to figure out why I can't install Ubuntu 12 64bit on my PC? Thanks! – user92322 Sep 27 '12 at 03:01
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I saw this too

sudo dmraid -rE

fixed it for me, from this thread:

Why doesn't the installer see all of my hard drives?

Th disk was messed up, and had some garbage metadata.

Community
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prof_braino
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